Organizational development has been of focus for several years, but still many companies do not understand the importance of change management models. Almost 70% of all major organizational change efforts fail, which among others is because of a lack of holistic approach to the management of change and the extend of the models used. This emphasizes the importance for companies to have a good and realistic change management model before starting to implement the transformation.

The importance of change management models

The arena most businesses operate in is fast changing and rapidly moving forward. This and the globalization only increases the need for a good change management model to see the change through. For a change to be carried out with perfection a holistic approach to change management models is required.

The statistics speak for themselves, not many managers understand the tools, models and the mindset needed to get the employees to understand the urgency of the change. Therefore it can often be a good idea to hire a consultant firm to help lead the change and give the proper models and tools for an effective change management model. At Tools4management, you can be provided with the processes and models you need to learn about successfully implementing change management in your company, and through different models you can avoid all the common pitfalls.

Get the employees to understand the urgency of the change

If your employees don’t understand why the change is important they will have a difficult time turning around and joining the change. According to John Kotter, one of the gurus within leadership, it is essential to create a sense of urgency, or else the business case is predetermined to fail. It is crucial that the management, through leadership, communication and different models, can make the business case come alive and speak to the heart of the employees inspiring them to involve themselves in the transformation. Therefore it is extremely important to have a management that can establish a sense of urgency. This is the first step in Kotters 8-step model for leading change.

There is different change management models and tools which can be good in leading the organizational development in the right direction.

Different approaches to change management models

Tools4management offers change management models within a variation of areas, from different strategies ie. in mergers and acquisitions to change of corporate culture or cost reduction. Change management models are not something you implement overnight, it is a long process. Some corporate cultures are more open and willing to change than others, which makes every change unique. When creating the change management team it is essential to include early adopters, resisters, and informal leaders, and in that way create a diversified group with enough power to lead the change and implement the model.

Different models and styles of managing change

There are different approaches and models on how to manage change in a vibrant company aiming for developing their business, all with different advantages and disadvantages. It is important to notice that strategic change is context sensitive. As mentioned above, the corporate culture has an important link to how well the employees can adapt to the change, depending on their needs, different styles of management models are available, ie. educational and delegation, collaboration, participation, direction, and coercion.

The change emotion curve model

Every person adapts to change in a different speed, it is therefore extremely important for the management to understand this, and not expect that people will follow the change curve synchronously. It can be fatal for the success of the change if the management believe most of their employees to be in the acceptance phase when actually, they are still in the anger phase. A model for management to link organizational change to the individual change can make the difference for success. Furthermore, it is important to respect the individual speed within the employee groups, and to add more focus to the late adopters. Tools4management offer you various models to detect the individual signs of the employees.

Model for stakeholder management and analysis

It can be fruitful to prepare a stakeholder analysis and draw a stakeholder chart. The more specific and sophisticated the stakeholder groups are divided into, the better is the foundation for the management to target the groups with effective change communication.

Due to auto-communicative effects, the communication to the outside world is also of relevance. The employees cannot feel like they are left out, since they are the ones who have to adapt to the change, it is important that the management has some models to secure that the employees don’t hear about parts of the change from i.e. the media.

Furthermore it is important to consider how much the change will impact a certain stakeholder group, how much influence the group has on the change and different strategies for the management to get the members of the stakeholder group to buy-in and how to involve them in the change. Without change management models, this process can be quite confusing.

The change management model project plan

A five-step project plan is a good comprehensive model to make sure that there is kept track of the whole process. The model involve determination of stakeholder information needs, adequate communication, training requirements, adequate controlling, and regular updates. The model will step by step imply the needed action for the management. Without such a model it can be easy to forget important measures now and then.

Model for measure and acknowledgement

It can be a fatal mistake not to recognize the changes your employees have made, therefore it can be rewarding to include some kind of measure in the change management model, i.e. the Balanced Scorecard is a good model to use. It is central that the employees hard work for the change to be a success is not ignored by the management. To continuously focus on the change and what further can be improved in the company, will leave the firm and the management with the best result.

Change is about changing people not organisations, organisations will transform when the management and employees change their way of doing business, which is why good change management models are central to a successful transformation of a firm. Tools4management offers you change management models to achieve your goals.

As Change management is a broad term that defines various management situations, there is no sole definition of Change Management. The business world is constantly developing, and to meet the ever changing demands that define the international market, businesses have to constantly adapt and redefine themselves with regard to the world surrounding them. Change Management is a tool that enables organizations to reach a desired future state by adjusting and redefining their infrastructure to the changing demands defined by the market. In this way, the definition of Change Management involves change on the individual as well as the corporate level. As the BNET Business Dictionary defines, Change Management is 'the coordination of a structured period of transition from situation A to situation B in order to achieve lasting change within an organization'. The definition of Change Management, in other words, is the application of a structured process, on the individual as well as the organizational level, to meet changing market demands and achieve desired results.

The History of Change Management

Change Management is a branch of thought that developed through the 1980s and was initially implemented by huge corporations, which particularly benefitted from defining a new approach to effective management of change. Among those companies that initially defined Change Management as a part of their leadership policies were GE, Ford, and AT&T. However, it was not until the 1990s that Change Management became adopted by such rapidly evolving sectors as information technology and human resource that it became broadly implemented in large as well as smaller companies. The risks and costs of implementing change without a structured approach had by then become too high and the possible benefits of Change Management too persuasive. Through the 2000s Change Management experts, whose previous employers had primarily been consulting firms, became integrated by companies. From the 2000s and onward the demand for Change Management experts has grown steadily while today Change Management is broadly implemented in business leaders' strategies for defining companies’ transforming processes to meet the changing market demands.

Change Management - A Definition of Kotter’s Eight Step Model

There are many definitions of the process of implementing change in organizations. One that has become particularly accepted, however, is Harvard Professor John Kotter's Eight Step Model of Change Management as defined in Leading Change (1996).

Kotter’s Eight Step Model - A Definition of Modern Change Management:

Create urgency

Form a powerful coalition

Create a vision for change

Communicate the vision

Define and remove obstacles

Define short-term wins

Build on the change

Anchor the changes in corporate culture

As change can often be a difficult thing for employees to accept, the demand for capable communicators of the definition of a company’s visions is, according to Kotter, crucial to a positive change process. Once employees see that there is a reason for change, the process has to be defined and employees need to be directed. Kotter argues that by recruiting a mixed group of individuals with potential for carrying out the change on employee level, a powerful coalition is formed. The group’s task, Kotter furthermore points out, is to communicate the definition of this change process, so employees understand the change's potential for creating a desirable future. Moreover, managers must communicate how change on the organizational level will benefit employees on the individual level, and this must be "lived out" by the managers. Also, managers must be able to define and remove obstacles for implementing the desired change by thinking strategically. Once subsidiary goals are reached, Kotter goes on to explain, they should be celebrated, and particularly important individuals should be rewarded. As real change runs deep, however, it is important to keep implementing improvements to initial successes. Finally, the structural changes should become implemented to define the organization's core structure.

Our definition of Change Management

To sum up our Change Management definition, Change Management functions on the people level of change in organizations to meet the demands of the ever changing market. If Change Management is executed sufficiently, workers, on the individual level, will feel engaged in the process of change, which will transform companies’ infrastructure to meet changing market demands. In our definition of Change Management, the common goal becomes implemented on the individual level which leads to an individual awareness of common goals and a collective effort to reach these goals throughout a company’s transformation process.

When defining a new company structure, there are several aspects you need to be aware of. A new company structure is not something you implement right away. You have to carefully check the new company structure for advantages and disadvantages, and how it is going to be implemented as well. Furthermore, we must consider which potential complications that may occur in the middle of a process.

When implementing a new company structure, there is a business tool which contains all the key points to ensure a safe implementation. The tool is called Change Management.

Implement new company structure with Change Management

With Change Management, you are able to ask the right questions to ensure the new company structure will be properly implemented, and with as few errors as possible. The business tool can be used in all aspects of the organization, whether it concerns implementing new IT systems or any new project, that changes the way the organization do business. To mention a few more examples, Change Management can be used when implementing a cultural change, mergers and acquisitions, relocation, downsizing, cost reduction initiatives, and new procedures.

Why does change efforts typically fail when implementing a new company structure?

People leading the change think that announcing the change is the same as implementing it

People’s concerns with change are not surfaced or addressed

Those being asked to change are not involved in planning the change

There is no urgent or compelling reason to change. The business case is not communicated

A compelling vision that excites people about the future has not been developed or communicated

The change leadership team doesn’t include early adopters, resisters, or informal leaders

The change isn’t piloted, so the organization doesn’t learn what’s needed to support the change

Organizational systems and other initiatives aren’t aligned with the change

Progress is not measures, and no one recognizes the changes that people have worked hard to make

People are not held accountable for implementing the change

Key points of new company structure

When implementing a new company structure there are some key points which must be complied to ensure a good implementation process.

First of all, if a new company structure should be well implemented, stakeholders need to be prepared for changes. If stakeholders are not well prepared for changes, the new company structure will definitely fail. Stakeholders need to be willing to adapt the new company structure and pursue key points to ensure a qualitative process. By conducting the key points correctly and with moderation, the implementation of the new company structure will be well executed.

The project manager of a new company structure needs to plan which primary and secondary targets the project should include. Furthermore, the project manager has to delegate the right tasks to the right co-workers regarding qualifications and personality. There is a possibility for several parameters effecting the process of a project. Therefore it is important to include backup plans in several areas when implementing a new company structure.

There is always a reason to look at leadership development, when either becoming a leader or you already are a leader. It is important not to rest on your laurels as leader, as there always will be fields within leadership development, which can be improved.

Leadership development involves many fields of leadership, and therefore it is difficult to master them all. Actually, it is impossible to master all fields within leadership development. It is an expertise you will never achieve to perfection. Bearing this in mind, you must accept not to master all fields of leadership development.

It is important not to be pessimistic about your role as a leader, as it is impossible to master all fields within leadership development to perfection, and to make everyone satisfied. It is natural for human beings not to be perfect. Lack of perfection makes us unique individuals. Instead of pursuing perfection, you should accept not being an expert in each field of leadership development. Delegate these tasks to co-workers, who possess the qualifications, to ensure a certain field is being correctly accomplished at more ease.

Comparing Management and Leadership

There are no longer any doubt that any leader should go away from MANAGING and focus on LEADING. It is more difficult than you think to distinguish between these two styles in your day-to-day job. And this is important to acknowledge and focus on the capabilities of the LEADING part of your personality or the people you coach in their leadership development.

Fields of leadership development

Leadership development is not all about academic knowledge. As a matter a fact, academic knowledge figures as the second most important field of leadership development. To become a successful leader, you need to contain the right basic personal values and tools to inspire, motivate, and collaborate with your co-workers. By motivating and inspiring your co-workers, you will experience happier and more efficient co-workers, ensuring better collaboration, and thereby stronger financial returns.

At Tools4management you can learn more about leadership development regarding leadership to direction, and leadership to co-workers. These two fields of leadership development involves two kinds of roles as a leader. At leadership development’s leadership to direction, you need to be good at formal presentations and regular business tasks. At leadership development’s leadership to co-workers you still need to appear formal, however it is at a less formal level. You need to know when to be a tough leader, taking responsibility, and making difficult decisions. Contrary you need to know when to take care of your co-workers at a personal level.

Learn more about leadership development

Tools4management are able to help you regarding leadership development by using the Leadership Toolbox. Leadership Toolbox involves all you need to know about leadership development whether it is regarding your own company or your customer’s company.

One of the most seen problems in today’s business organizations are the fact that though a lot of effort is put into creating a strategy there are still a big gap between this strategy and what gets done in the company. Behind the strategy and strategy plan lies a lot of effort analyzing the company’s competencies, customers, stakeholders, competitors and strategic options. But why is it that all that effort a lot of times just ends up in a nice report that does not change the mind of the employees to change in the new direction that management wants.

The phrase “What you measure is what you get” is very well known and from experience is also a true fact. You can communicate a new strategy and direction as much as you want but people will really first change direction when they get measured on it. The classical measurement is the financial results but will only make the organization focus on short term results and not focus on the long term strategy.

The Balanced Scorecard is a great tool to help organizations, departments or teams to improve performance taken the integrated organization and strategy plan into account. It links together the strategy, vision and the daily operations.

The theory behind Balanced Scorecard

Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton described the concept of the Balanced Scorecard in a 1992 article. This article was very popular and resulted in the famous book “The Balanced Scorecard” that was published in 1996.

The definition of the Balanced Scorecard is:

“Balanced scorecard methodology is a management tool designed to translate an organization's mission statement and overall business strategy into specific, quantifiable goals and to monitor the organization's performance in terms of achieving these goals.”

The basic idea behind is that you take the organizations strategy and mapping it to measures and then cascading it down in the organization. The KPIs or measures are divided into four “perspectives” as proposed by Kaplan and Norton.

Financial: Encourages the identification of a few relevant high-level financial measures. Should answer the question “How do we look to shareholders?”

Customer: Encourages the identification of measure that answers the question “How do our customers see us?”

Internal business processes: Encourages the identification of measures that answer the question “What must we excel at?”

Employee learning and growth: Encourages the identification of measure that answers the question “How can we continue to improve and create value?”

Why should you implement The Balanced Scorecard?

There are a number of signs that you may need a new performance measurement system as presented by Vitale and Mavrinac:

Performance is acceptable on all dimensions except profit: A focus on quality and other measures has led to improvements in isolated areas, but not profits.

Customers don’t buy even when prices are competitive: The problem may lie in your relative performance to competitors.

No one notices when performance measurement reports aren’t produced: Data in the reports no longer contains meaningful information for decision makers.

Managers spend significant time debating the meaning of the measures: Measures must be clearly linked to strategic objectives.

Competitive edge is what all the enterprises want in the current scenario. Employing changes efficiently is one of the ways to assure progress and have an advantage over the competitors. But the million dollar question is how to manage the changes efficiently? In this regard, Business Process Management has a big role to play. A process based approach to changes is a regular practice in businesses across the globe. However, in many organizations it is not monitored properly. This leads to various problems at a later stage which might ultimately lead to monetary losses. Organizations spend huge sums of money on the process change initiatives but enough is not done to set up an effective process monitoring structure. Business Process Management or BPM is required to streamline the work and enhance efficiency.

Managing business becomes easier

BPM helps in various processes. It betters operational competence, introduces innovation, reduces costs, enhances customer experiences and provides the required edge for competitive success. As a counter argument it can be said that software is not essential to achieve these but for the RTE (Real Time Enterprise) consistency and proper delivery of business processes are essential. Integration, monitoring and collaboration are required to achieve this automation. BPM helps to manage a business in a modified way. Although BPM have rigid frameworks that can be altered to suit the business purposes. Unfortunately there are various businesses that still refuse to acknowledge the importance of this tool.

Processes are better organized

Process management also demands a change of thought where business is concerned. Sales, manufacturing and logistics in an organization go beyond than just being mere functions. These are processes that are subjected to constant changes. The business process management enables the enterprise to organize its activities so as to meet its goals and aims perfectly. This tool stresses on the automation of the business processes. It also integrates the process with data and applications. This ensures that there is quicker market acquisition to beat the competitors.

BPM improves production

Business Process Management or BPM is a recent methodology (although called different things throughout the year) that further helps in defining the objectives of a business. It not only helps in improving production but also significantly improves quality and allows for better management of production processes. It focuses majorly on increasing output as well as taking care of the business on priority basis.

Besides these there are several other ways in which the BPM is helpful for an organization:

Strategic sourcing, or simply sourcing can be technically defined as a methodology that can be used in supply chain management. It helps in significant cost cuts and provides other benefits for the betterment of businesses. To be more specific, sourcing can well be termed as a periodic event that involves identification as well as selection of the preliminary commercial arrangements with a particular supplier that creates as well as redefines a long term business relationship. Strategic sourcing is basically the first step in the business ladder. And once it gets combined with an able purchasing management along with an effective set of day-to-day purchasing activities, the resulting outcome makes a world of difference for businesses.

In today’s time of cutthroat competition where there is hardly any room for laxity, an effective combination of purchasing management and strategic sourcing can very well be termed as a ‘deadly duo’ and is always used by the supply chain management experts to curve out new and innovative ways of cost-cutting and improving the quality of the end product or service, and to enjoy more time for marketing and promoting them, so as to gain a distinctive edge over their competitors.

Let us discuss various aspects of the combination of the two:

Identifying the suppliers

It is the responsibility of the effective purchasing managers to relentlessly locate the best materials in terms of quality and price from the most trustworthy suppliers. When it comes to identifying or defining the alternative suppliers, it is imperative that a track of all the logistical considerations is kept so as to make the most of them under certain external conditions prevailing in the market.

Another important factor that needs to be considered while identifying the suppliers is the opportunity of competitive differentiation. Using a certain specific supplier that enjoys a positive and popular brand image is always helpful, when it comes to creating a real opportunity of product differentiation, and that in turn leads the customers to prefer a certain product or service over other similar kinds of product or services available in the market.

Cultivation of relationships

Identification of the best suppliers is always important. However, strategic sourcing is not just limited to that. It also involves cultivation of positive as well as long lasting relationships with the suppliers; this results in a win-win situation for both the sides. Cultivating and developing solid, long-lasting relationship with suppliers is crucial, especially for helping professionals to meet costs, achieve quality objectives and speedy access to the market.

Improve skills continuously

Purchase managers and professionals always look forward to maximize their strategic sourcing acumen by improving their knowledge. This can be done by pursuing various online courses that are conducted by leading industry players. One factor that needs to be remembered is that strategic sourcing is a continuous and never-ending process, and in order to excel, one needs constant development of skills and knowledge. Hence, to become proficient, the professionals need to update their knowledge. This helps in understanding, planning and implementing a sound and effective sourcing strategy. This, in turn, ensures effectiveness, and lends an element of efficiency to the sourcing strategy for creating realistic opportunities for improving the corporate image of a business; enhances its market share and sales, and most importantly reduces costs.

Understanding and accepting the possibilities

Implementing sourcing and an effective purchasing management ask for a wide range of skills and knowledge. Here is a quick look at the competencies that are required for excelling in the field of strategic sourcing and decision-making.

Describing, distinguishing and accessing the key issues of opportunities, principles, strategies, development and its techniques that are pursued or followed by a business to gain a competitive edge

Defining as well as describing the issues pertaining to global sourcing, negotiations, business ethics and the likes

Identifying as well as applying decision-making frameworks along with problem-solving skills for determining of the best course of action related to the already discussed strategy areas.

Now that you know about the aspects of sourcing and purchasing management, you can handle its procedures with utmost efficiency.

Most people spend more than eight hours a day at the workplace. A congenial work environment can motivate an employee to put up a superior performance while a dreary one can affect productivity. That is why, it is important for every employer to pay utmost attention to employee performance and engagement. The employment sector is extremely competitive today and every employer wants to hire the finest talent for the steady development of his business. Great job opportunities are galore for talented professionals who will not give a second thought to shift in case there are any discrepancies. So, an employer needs to put best efforts in order to keep the best employees engaged with his or her organization for a long time. Otherwise, he or she will lose some capable recruits to a competitor.

If you run a business and operate a huge workforce and does not want to lose your skilled human resources to your arch business rival, you must boost employment performance and engagement. The following five tips and guidelines may help you in this significant matter.

Make out what encourages your employees

Do you know what inspires your employees? Yes, you need to gather knowledge regarding what serves as an impetus to your staff to work harder. If you are thinking how you can get to know that, you can conduct surveys or polls department wise and team wise.

Be a good leader

A leader is not one who always wears a dominating attitude. It is one who is authoritative and venerable, a motivator and easily approachable. Your employees strive to materialize your vision and fulfill your business goals. They listen to you, understand you and give their best shot to flourish your business. So, you must be available and prompt enough to listen to their problems and solve them with care.

Let your employees express their voice

Like the way you want your workforce to grasp your ideas and objections, the same way your employees also need the freedom and flexibility to express their opinions and perspectives. Most professionals feel the need to change when they are restricted to have a say or think that their opinions are not valued. This does not benefit a company at all.

Recruit efficient managers

A good manager can heighten the productivity of a department and add to a company’s prosperity. Do not recruit a candidate for a managerial position just because he or she has successfully executed a few projects. It is advisable to choose one who has years of experience in administrative roles.

Implement gamification

Boosting employee engagement is easier with gamification. If you are new to this concept, you should know gamification is a popular tool for increasing employee engagement. It involves game procedures to prevent monotony at workplace and increase efficiency.

With these five tips, you can motivate your employees to perform better, create long-term associations with them and set forth to write the success story of your business with a combined effort.

Running a business successfully requires a higher level of efficiency, appropriate strategic planning and strong awareness of what’s happening in the global economic scenario. If any of these three things goes mayhem, there will hardly be any profit. Generally speaking, a lot of confusion occurs in the strategic planning process which is why strategic plans fail to succeed in most cases. But, why does this happen? What are the factors behind the crash of most strategic plans? Let’s find them out in the following paragraphs.

Lack of achievable goals– You can set a number of business objectives, but all of them should be realistic and easily attainable within a convenient span of time. The goals need to be clearly defined. In case, any employee faces difficulty in comprehending and accomplishing the objectives, he or she should be given proper and prompt guidance in solving the problems.

Too much focus on internal operations– A major fault that many firms commit is stressing more importance on internal operations than on the external processes. Equal amount of attention should be offered to both these aspects. For example, if you are ignorant about the varying requirements of your target customers and the changing market trends, will you be able to cater to your niche audience successfully?

Lack of resources– Resources form the topmost tier of planning a project. Setting business goals, building strategies and applying the tactics – all must be based on the amount of resources you need to pull out the project and the amount you can manage to gather. For instance, if you are not able collect the required funds; you need to plan your project according to the sum you can afford to spend. Crossing the budget and going out of money in the middle of the project is the most horrible experience a company can have. This affects its reputation and reliability in the market. Trust and repute once lost are hard to gain once more.

Not much emphasis on resource planning– Resource planning is a vital part of planning a project. But, the fact is that some are not aware of it and some ignores it even knowing about its significance. Before getting started with a project, it is essential to decide on the

Number of professionals required to work on the project

Skill sets needed for the efficient execution of the project

Types of roles and responsibilities assigned to each of the professionals working on the project

Appropriate project timeframe

Whether strategic plans will succeed or not depends a lot on those who materialize them.

Lack of flexibility in project scope– To be precise, the scope of a project may undergo changes due to various reasons. That is why a backup plan is necessary. When you have a Plan B, you can save the time required to perform new planning according to the new project scope. Also, there is no hard and fast rule that project activities should go on just like the way they have been planned. If a team member pops up something really innovative and viable, there should not be any problem in implementing that.

These are the five reasons that result in the failure of strategic plans. If you wish to venture into business, you should make efforts to steer clear of these pitfalls for savoring success.

Over the years, change management has become an indispensable part of business. Those who have ignored its importance a few years ago cannot do the same in present times. The emergence of novel technologies at frequent levels affects business procedures and influences business owners to make changes in their goals or embrace a new business model. In order to cope up with the frequently-changing business scenario, every organization needs to ensure successful change management. If you are a business person and considering change management as one of your priorities now, this article may come to your help. Below mentioned are certain principles that are implemented by many organizations for the success of change management.

The first step you should take for successful change management is to employ skilled change managers who are adept in handling organizational change management in tandem with the firm’s existing work culture. A good change manager is one, who does not put efforts to trigger any changes in an existing work culture, but understands and adapts to that culture, look forward to scope of improvement and initiates clear and comprehensive changes.

You must pay attention to choose efficient managers for the effective handling of every department of your company. A manager should be one who has the capacity to motivate employees, possesses the authority to train and guide them and is equipped with the proficiency to contribute in decision-making processes. Professionals of such capacities have the capability to prepare employees for big changes.

It is a much more lucrative and intelligent decision to allow inputs of employees in a decision-making process. You will gain a lot if you follow the participative style of leadership. First of all, employees will feel good that they can make contributions in a company’s administrative procedures and that their opinions are valued. This will help you retain the best talents in your organization. Employees will promptly acknowledge any changes since they are entitled to express their standpoints.

At one point, you may have to bring a sweeping change in your business objectives. When you will be required to do so, you must not forget to communicate with the management professionals and the entire workforce before planning and announcing the change. If you think employees will readily accept the change, you are wrong. Contrary to your thinking, employees will face difficulties in understanding the new implementations and thereby, hesitate or deny agreeing to them. This very much affects the competence, creativity and output of an employee. So, constant communication with the employees will help you ensure efficient change management.

Therefore, in a nutshell, for successful change management, you should

Set achievable goals

Motivate employees

Organize a group of efficient and experienced executives

Communicate

Give employees the freedom to put across their point of view

Make your employees feel that they are respected and their viewpoints are appreciated

Acknowledge the hard work of your employees and provide them rewards on the basis of performance

These are the principles that are implemented by top companies to ensure the accomplishment of change management.

If you feel you have the world’s most difficult manager or boss to deal with, let me tell you that there are many who think the same way. So, there is no need to think that you are the most unfortunate employee cursed with a problematic boss. Rather than making up your mind to shift focus to another job, don’t you think you should give one last try to deal with your pernickety manager peacefully? You never know you may come out with flying colors this time. So, check out the following tips to tackle with a fussy manager or an extremely finicky boss.

The first advice is to find out whether your manager is really hard to please or not. Is the fastidious nature of your manager annoys you most? Or is he prone to shout loud on each and every matter? Whatever may be the matter, you need to find out whether your manager possesses such a nature or he is being compelled to put up such a rough attitude. You must understand that managers also go through a pressure to bring out the best of their departments and teams. This can be a valid reason for your boss to be coarse and choosy.

The second tip is to grasp your manager’s working style and make your best effort to match up to that. If he is prompt in taking decisions, you should learn to wrap up your work without delay. On the other hand, if your manager wants you to devote a considerable amount of time when performing a task, you should follow suit. If you are successful in matching up to his style of working, there will be probably no reason for you to complain about your boss.

Your boss likes to communicate via emails and each time you land up in his cabin to inform him about work progress and other details. So, you are bound to hear some harsh words from him. The difference in communication mode often creates problems between an employee and his manager. If you are facing such troubles, take a step ahead to follow the medium of communication appreciated by your boss.

Our bosses too possess some weaknesses. You may find your boss to be a bit disorganized or take a lot of time to respond to your queries. So, the thing you can do rather than fretting out on his weaknesses is to help him in organizing tasks efficiently or wait to hear from him. Will this be an act of buttering the boss to seek credit? May be or maybe not, but you are sure to get appreciation for this act since you will be offering valuable assistance to your boss to ease his tasks.

There is one common practice at workplace and it is bullying those employees working under a difficult and hard to please manager. If this happens to you, you should not react at all, but keep cool and ignore those remarks. Also, never express your grievances about your boss at office. A colleague may pass your chat sessions to your boss. Then, imagine what will happen!

So, apply these tips to deal with your persnickety manager and be hopeful of seeing a difference.

Chief procurement officers or CPOs develop procurement or sourcing bench strength for a number of reasons and one of them is to make sure that the sourcing team possesses the skills and experience required for the smooth functioning of the organization. Building procurement bench strength has several superb benefits. It helps to recognize the strong points, detect the weak points and pitfalls and identify the competencies and eventually, aids in bridging the gaps or balancing the paucity. Apart from these, it helps to boost employee engagement and retain valued employees. By developing procurement bench strength you can convey to your employees that the company gives them much importance.

So, in the introductory paragraph, it is clear that it makes absolute sense for a CPO to build procurement bench strength. But, how can you develop it appropriately? Here are some essential tips that may come to help in building sourcing bench strength.

First and foremost, you need to have a sound understanding of the core capacities of your firm since the competitive edge of your set-up highly depends on those skills.

Once you have gained a strong understanding of the capacities, you should start prioritizing them in accordance with their order of importance for the responsibilities of employees. In case the current job roles do not match well, you must update them without delay.

The next step is to create a graph which will contain the competency gaps in all the departments of your company. This will help you determine how much attention you need to pay for the development of a particular department or an employee.

Create a development plan for the employee or department in need of improvement.

When you are building bench strength, it is advisable not to consider training courses as the only way of development. Employees require hands-on or practical experience in order to utilize their skills and knowledge. Otherwise, there is no point of imparting training courses. That is why it is significant to offer valuable opportunities to employees to apply their learning along with providing them all-inclusive training via online classes, coaching and mentoring. Employees should be permitted sufficient flexibility to make use of their knowledge on their own.

While setting business objectives and assigning roles to employees, you need to ensure that the goals are achievable and the assigning of tasks to employees is appropriate. Discuss with your managers to know whether their teams can fulfill the goals.

Follow a good and efficient employee appraisal system which can recognize your highly talented employees, employees with a consistent and impressive performance record and also those who are not so dedicated and proficient.

Communicate with your employees and encourage them to voice their opinions. You need to provide your employees with career advancement opportunities. This enables to retain the most competent and hard-working staff.

With these basic essential steps, you can develop procurement bench strength efficiently. This will be a stepping stone to ensure the soaring success of your organization

At present, the business environment is really tough and if a banking institution wants to flourish in such a scenario, they have to make sure that each and every banking operation is performing easily and smoothly. With the aim of managing the several significant operations, banking institutions, small-sized and large-scale alike are adopting the business process management or BPM technology. Fluctuating economic conditions and volatile market trends are influencing banks to consider business process management as the most efficient and viable enterprise strategy for boosting the operational competencies. We will learn more about the impact of BPM on the banking sector in the following paragraphs.

Today, the business process management technology is useful for the prosperity of almost every industry. It offers a wide range of solutions in the form of frameworks that make it easier to synchronize, manage and mechanize tasks and aid in the decision-making process. This proves to be very beneficial for financial institutions like, banks. Banking institutions come across a lot of challenges on a daily basis due to a number of factors, such as

An array of banking operations that need efficient handling

The recent and unpredictable scenario of interest rate

The tough competition from the other financial services companies

BPM can help a bank successfully overcome the challenges occurring as a result of these aspects.

The BPM technology can aid a banking institution in a number of ways. It can be utilized for uplifting the standard of business processes, improving productivity, averting non-compliance and preventing losses.

Uplifting the standard of business processes– There should be a structured process for every banking operation. For instance, if a customer faces difficulties in a loan approval process at a particular banking institution, he or she is less likely to visit that bank for taking loans in future. So, a bank needs to simplify the loan approval process and also, make it faster. BPM helps to systematize or arrange the whole process and enables everyone to follow a well-chalked out system to ease the business processes.

Improving productivity– With the implementation of business process management, banks have benefitted a lot from automated process of generating transactional documentation. The auto-generated transactional documentation process boosts productivity as it proves to be the most lucrative and vital business process modeling. Banks are able to save a considerable amount of time since the management of transactional documentation generation process takes less time with the help of BPM.

Preventing losses– Banking officials are required to manage various complex business processes. Manual work cannot always be flawless and pitch-perfect and machine can also malfunction to detect issues and correct errors at times. In such cases, both minor and major issues can be overlooked by both man and machine as a result of which, banks can sustain monetary losses and gain bad reputation. The deployment of BPM will make sure that banks do not incur losses. The business process management technology can be used to convert transactional documents into a process application.

Therefore, it can be said that business process management technology is revolutionizing the banking industry and the banks are utilizing its benefits to offer supreme services to their customers.

There are many secrets to success for an organization and one of them is surely change management. Change management enables a smooth organizational change with a well-planned outline of tools and processes. With the implementation of a comprehensive change management framework an organization can benefit from a higher return on investment. In course of time, more and more companies are embracing change management. Every firm needs to pay attention towards building a well-researched change management strategy in order to gain a competitive edge in this dynamic business world. Creating such a crucial strategy is no easy task. If you need any help in this regard, the following paragraphs may act as your guide in developing a good change management strategy.

Changes can be of different types. You may feel the need to make slight amendments or enforce a new scheme. Whatever be the requirement, you need to understand the ins and outs of the change you wish to introduce. Try to get clear answers to the following questions.

Why is the change necessary?

Will the change affect the present workforce?

To what extent will the resources be influenced by the change?

What is the time-span of the change?

When you have prompt answers of these questions, it can be assumed that you will be able to bring out the change without any difficulty. But, before the implementation of the change, there are some other steps you need to follow.

Next, you require finding out the possible reaction of the workforce against the change. While learning about this aspect, you should take into account the response of the changes that took place in the past. This will give you a fair idea on this crucial aspect.

The third step is perhaps the most significant one i.e. making the employees aware of the proposed change. Companies that do not communicate with their employees before introducing a change commit a very big mistake. Due to this error, employees fail to understand the scope of the change, many refuse to accept it and a company’s turnover gets affected. Productivity degrades, valued employees resign, projects cross the set budget, fail to meet deadlines and several negative things occur because of this fault. So, you should steer clear of committing this blunder. Settle down for a meeting with the managers of all departments of your organization and discuss with them about the successful implementation of the change management strategy. Listen to their views and pay heed to their feedback. Your managers should bear the responsibility of making their team members aware of the change which will take place shortly.

Now it is the final step when you will be required to initiate the change. If you follow the first three steps efficiently, you can expect everything positive.

So, this is a brief guide to build a winning change management strategy which will help you to retain talented employees, keep project activities within the budget, maintain schedules and earn high revenues.

A leader has a lot of responsibilities, starting from taking a stance, giving commands, directing conversations to giving wise reactions and tackling diverse situations. Leaders are expected to be perfect, flawless and impeccable. But, is it possible for a human being to reflect these qualities all the time? The answer is definitely no. Leaders are humans after all and they can fall short some times. For instance, leaders are seen to be hesitant, annoyed or ineffective when it comes to listening with attention and empathy. A leader is a multitasking personality and when a person is juggled with too many tasks, some unfavorable habits like, disinterest in listening are bound to develop.

Listening skills are important in a leader. In order to run an organization with utmost efficiency, it is necessary for an administrator to listen to what his or her employees have to say. Otherwise, a lot of talented employees may leave the organization and grab a job opportunity at another concern where they will have an influential role in the company’s decision-making procedure. This is one of the major disadvantages of not listening emphatically. Missing out on various prime factors is also a disadvantage of being a bad listener. It is not unnatural for a person in charge to remember all the minute details. As already stated in the introductory paragraph, leaders are also human beings and humans do possess some amount of imperfections.

So, let’s see how a leader can build up good listening skills. Take a look at the following.

The first and foremost thing that an administrator needs to do is giving others a chance to voice their opinions. Along with that, he or she must encourage others to express their concepts and ideas. The whole point is to wear a positive attitude and oozing out a vibe that generates an eagerness to listen.

Many professionals in managerial position feel that they do not require saying thanks. This is a wrong conception and an incorrect attitude towards employees who are working hard for the improvement of the organization. Showing gratitude is a necessary and commendable trait for a leader. This gesture conveys an optimistic message that the hard work of an employee is being appreciated.

Understanding the core point of messages and tracking the essential aspects of every conversation are required to be done by a leader. This helps to jot down whether there is a need for more information and make valuable suggestions regarding the steps to be taken in future.

Responding fast and responding wisely and graciously is significant for a person in the position of the administrator. The response does not need to be always via verbal or written appreciations. It can also be through an affirmative body language which assures the speaker that his or her words are being listened with attention.

Emphatic listening skill paves the way for building confidence and trust amongst employees in an organization. A leader should develop this skill in order to run an organization with the active involvement of each employee.

We are racing towards the final month of the year and very soon companies will settle down to implement financial strategies for the New Year. While making new strategies, companies often come across that some abundant and unnecessary purchases have taken place round the year. This aspect requires much attention since one of the effective ways of savings is to curb profuse buys. Sometimes, company heads become clueless regarding how to tackle maverick expenses. If you are one of them, you may take help from the following tips and tricks to control and prevent eccentric buys.

A very small number of organizations tend to follow a comprehensive P2P or purchase-to-pay system which constitutes the advantages of a procurement plan. Firms that are not inclined to follow this system experience a lot of discrepancies and troubles, such as maverick purchases and inappropriate conformity to the contract. By not following the P2P method, an organization can have difficulties while dealing with payments, complex data management, supplier management and many more crucial aspects. According to a survey, more than 50 percent of bills are produced due to unnecessary purchases. This has been recorded in large-sized businesses where the sourcing operations are handled by professionals.

Another major reason behind limitless spending is buying from suppliers when there is actually not much requirement of making purchases. A supplier should be contacted only when there is a requirement for purchases. Proper negotiation should be done with the suppliers in order to take advantage of the best possible rates. The whole process must be carefully and efficiently managed by a team of efficient requisitioners and operational purchasers. A requisitioner bears the responsibility of raising a demand or a requisition for the resources required to be purchased by an organization while an operational purchaser executes the purchase with the use of proper purchase-to-pay system. Are you taking heed of this significant aspect?

One set of purchase-to-pay processes may not be functional for two types of businesses. It may work wonders for one company and may not be of same efficacy in case of another firm. So, the solution is to customize the P2P processes according to your business needs. The processes must complement all types of purchases and cater to various roles in your organization. On a general basis, around 15 to 20 variations of a standard purchase-to-pay process are adequate to encompass all the bases.

A purchase order needs to be there for every purchase due to several reasons. Without the use of a purchase order, there will be no mention of the purchase in the ERP system as a result of which the higher management will be unaware of the acquisition. Also, the company will face problems in conveying the business and payment terms to the suppliers. In addition to that, during the time of product delivery, there will be no invoice or receipt to cross-check. Can you afford to tackle with so many inconveniences just because you do not want to use purchase order?

Therefore, apply these tips from the beginning of the New Year and see the difference in the savings figure this year and next year.

Over the last few years business process management or BPM has forayed into several industries. A large number of organizations has realized its worth and implemented it for better operational efficiency. But, during the implementation of business process management, many face some really robust challenges. Those who manage to overcome those challenges are successful in the proper incorporation of BPM and thus, enjoy its benefits. If you are yet to implement business process management for the fast development of your company, you need to be aware of the challenges you will come across during the incorporation. So, here are the five most dominant challenges you have to tackle when employing a BPM initiative.

Lack of infrastructure– Whether it is the first BMP initiative or the second one, a proper infrastructure is indispensable in order to ensure that the processes involved in the implementation of a business process management program continue with ease. But, this is something rarely seen in an organization. On the other hand, many firms tend to consider BPM as a ‘mechanism’ for achieving operational efficiency. BPM is not at all a tool for developing and enhancing operational excellence. Sooner the organizations realize this aspect, better for their operations in future. The right infrastructure and right control can show the road to success in BPM implementation.

Lack of a comprehensive plan of action– If you want to leverage the benefits of BPM, you need to chalk out a strong plan of action or an effective roadmap which will act as a guide towards appropriate implementation.

Ignoring the importance of a business case- A business case provides a comprehensible framework for a BPM initiative. In other words, it outlines the purposes behind the incorporation of a BPM program. A business case should generate clear answers to the following important queries.

What is the process state lately?

What is the estimated process state?

What are the costs, influences and incompetency related to the current process state?

What are the costs, resources and time required for the projected process state?

A long gap between the planning and incorporation phases- In many cases, it has been recorded that after the mapping of business processes, all the plans wait for a long time to be implemented. This gap between the mapping phase and the implementation phase diminishes and in course of time annuls the importance of employing a BPM initiative. Make sure you do not unnecessarily create a fissure between these two phases. You will end up being a loser otherwise.

Not paying attention to BPM CoE– The most essential factor for the successful implementation of business process management is BPM Center of Excellence or CoE. Building BPM CoE is significant and you need to organize a business process management team for the creation and efficient utilization of BPM Center of Excellence.

So, these are the five most powerful challenges to a business process management initiative. Keep focus and invest your best efforts to tackle these challenges and utilize the remarkable advantages of BPM to see your company swiftly climbing the ladder of success.

No matter if you already are a leader, or if you want to be a leader some day, developing your leadership skills are something that is worth spending time on. Here at Tools4management.com, you can buy a Leadership Powerpoint Presentation that can help you develop as a leader. The Leadership Powerpoint Presentation contains 27 professional slides about Leadership Development, which can immediately help you to develop your leadership skills. The best leaders are the ones that keep improving themselves while adapting to new tools and development inside the area of Leadership. Our Leadership Powerpoint Presentation is always updated with the existing practices, thus you can update your knowledge. When you review our Leadership Powerpoint Presentation, it is important that you accept the fact that nobody can be a perfect leader. There are many different practices and experts generally have a hard time agreeing on a single path for leaders. The Leadership Powerpoint Presentation reflects this, as it presents the most widely recognized practices within the area of leadership. It is up to you as a leader to get the most out of the Leadership Powerpoint Presentation, by taking out the leadership practices that are best for you in your daily context.

Why buy the Leadership Powerpoint Presentation?

The Leadership Powerpoint Presentation toolbox provides you with access to a wide range of theories and models within the area of leadership. Going through the Leadership Powerpoint Presentation you will gain insight into the most recognized approaches to leadership. Based on the Leadership Powerpoint Presentation you will be able to define which type of leader you want to be and have the necessary means to comply with this. After you have read the Leadership Powerpoint Presentation it is recommended that you save the slides to future use.
The Leadership Powerpoint Presentation is, compared to management courses, an easy and cheap way to gain the necessary tools to improve your leadership capabilities, which take a lot more time and also cost considerably more. If you want to read about the topics of the 27 slides, which is included in the Leadership Powerpoint Presentation, you can read it here where you also will be able to buy the Leadership Powerpoint Presentation. The Leadership Powerpoint Presentation can be used as a presentation if you have to learn others about leadership, and do not know how to make an inspiring presentation. You can also choose only use parts of the Leadership Powerpoint Presentation in your presentation, thereby you can make your presentation exactly the way you wish. We take pride in delivering as much as possible information to your Leadership Powerpoint Presentation, therefore you can proudly ‘steal’ slides from our Leadership Powerpoint Presentation and implement it into your own. Great leaders continuously develop through self-study, education, training and experience. Buying the Leadership Powerpoint Presentation is a step in the right direction for your own development. We hope to be a part of leadership development all over the world with our Leadership Powerpoint Presentation.

What contains the Leadership Powerpoint Presentation?

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How do you get the traditional organizations with the “silo” business function view to innovate, optimize and work together with the whole process view in mind? The answer has been around for some time now and is Business Process Management.

What is Business Process Management (BPM)?

According to Gartner “BPM refers to a set of management disciplines that accelerate effective business process improvement by blending incremental and transformative methods. BPM’s management practices provide for governance of a business process environment toward the goal of improving agility and operational performance. BPM is a structured approach that employs methods, policies, metrics, management practices and software tools to manage and continuously optimize an organizations activities and processes”.

According to Howard Smith and Peter Fingar “The contemporary BPM concepts is a third generation process management concept. The first wave was driven by the early scientific management movement and the second wave by the business process re-engineering thinking. The third wave – BPM – enables companies and workers to create and optimize new business processes on the fly. Change is the primary design goal. Through agile business processes, value chains can be monitored and continuously improved.

It is important to note that BPM does not require a specific IT platform per se. In fact BPM can be implemented without any IT tool. However, as commercially available tools are becoming much more mature, the benefits of using these tools are eminent.

How to run a Business Process Management project

So where to start? Do you go out and document all your processes, assign process owners and optimize the processes at once. Not likely. Start small by identifying problem processes or core processes and take one by one. There is more than enough work for a process office to start with one or two processes.

Use the recommended Business Process Management Framework to work from: Analyze, design, implement, Run/monitor.

Analyze

Identify business goals and define requirements for an existing or new process

In a business, nothing is interminable. Every aspect of a business changes with time. Hence, in order to keep pace with the changing trends, the management and its way of working also need to change. For that what is needed is an able leadership. In fact, it is proficient leadership that makes the management of an organization, effective. This in turn provides a shot in the arm to a business in terms of ability, credibility, and core competence.

Let us discuss the topic in details.

Leadership and its role

An organization, which is essentially a cluster of multiple people from various social and economic backgrounds generally looks up to an able leader for a considerable number of things, especially when it is going through a transitional phase. Proper leadership is mainly required for effective as well as sensible planning, confident decision-making, and for carrying our regular, conclusive and communication which are all indispensable parts of business activities. Employees of an organization look up to an able leader and expect his or her leadership to be supportive, concerned as well as committed to the welfare of the company and the employees as well.

Hence, it is perhaps best to summarize the role of leadership by saying that it creates an element of trust and mutual respect between the management and the employees. It is this element of trust that goes a long way in keeping the hope of a better future alive during difficult times, and recognizing and respecting the tough decisions which at times are required to be taken for tackling rough waters. Thus, it can well be said that a strong leadership bridges the gap between management and the employees.

It is seen that in organizations that are driven by poor leadership, employees are often bogged down by an element of frustration and uncertainty as far as the management is concerned. This makes them act in indecipherable ways, thereby, accentuating the sense of mistrust and communication gap between the two sides. It is the productivity that is heavily affected at the end of the day because of these blots in the business proceedings.

What an able leader is supposed to do?

As effective leadership plays a pivotal role during transition periods and when it comes to implementing changes in policies and operations, it is the leaders who are required to walk on a thin wire. They are expected to play their role with a lot of grittiness and character, holding the fort against issues like instability, confusion, emotionalism, fear, skepticism and what not! As all these result in a drastic reduction in productivity and ROI. The leaders are required to provide clarity about the issues and lend a direction to the proceedings.

They are also supposed to put emphasis on two things. Firstly, they need to pay maximum attention to the confusion of the employees, and acknowledge and validate them. Secondly, they must work with the employees, providing them new vision for their way ahead and helping them come to terms with the altered situation.

Thus, playing the role of an able leader is not a cakewalk. It calls for a lot of mental toughness and taking a lot of personal load that can be very demanding from the mental point of view. A true leader needs to take the onus of any loss of productivity that may emanate from any change.

Large scale and long term transformations require a thorough comprehension of the company’s values, its people, their cultures and behaviours. Laying out strategies are not enough. Organizational change is a common phenomenon in the business landscape today. There are various factors, like, globalization, innovations in technology, growth of social media and mobile adaptability that lead to constant changes in an organization. To keep pace with these challenges companies are fast adopting the best practices available for change management. However, only tactical plans are not adequate to establish value. There may be more than a thousand employees involved in this process; and the company has to ensure that the changes are accepted by each of the employees.

Here are 5 basic principles which will help you apply change management in your organization successfully:

Introducing a systematic change: Whenever a change is introduced, people are uncertain and they resist. Thus, it is important that the human side is taken into consideration while applying change management. To deal with these situations a data based approach is needed. Every individual has his own unique ability to adapt. Collecting data about employees can help evaluate the abilities, and the plans can be laid out accordingly. Involving just the team is not sufficient. Management, team and even the stakeholders should be a part of the transformation.

Changes in all levels: It has to begin from the top and continue till the end. Since changes are disconcerting, it is required to be introduced from the top leadership. Teams draw their inspiration from leaders. It is imperative for the leadership to accept the transformation first, in order to instil confidence in the rest of the employees.

Transformation mostly affects the bottom line: Implementing strategic changes affects various levels of an organization. Hence, it is essential to identify leaders at every stage so that the responsibilities for implementing the plans can be pushed down to the last levels. This is the reason why change management is considered to be a structured process. Every level must be trained by their leader, who is well informed about the company’s aims and vision.

Maintaining Sustenance: In order to completely authorize the employees certain factors are required, like, support, education, encouragement and sustenance. When there is enough support, people find the confidence to try out new changes. Their adaptability is crucial in dealing with the constant changes that are taking place in an organization.

Communication is a must: Mostly, leaders make the mistake of expecting the team to see the needs for the change as clearly as they do. It has to be comprehended that communication should be inbound as well as outbound. For effective implementation of transformations, what is required is to emphasize the main messages through systematic and well timed advices. These messages should be inspiring. To maintain a transparent process reach out to the target employees with the right information and at the right time. It is also important to consider their feedbacks and how they are responding to the changes emotionally.

Presently, change is perpetual in all kinds of organizations. It is necessary to remember that change in an institution is also a personal journey. Hence, human issues play a vital role in applying the change management models.

The relation between performance management and the balanced scorecard can very well be described with a one-liner – a Balanced Scorecard approach needs to be taken for a proper assessment and management of performance.

Traditionally, most of the companies, especially the federal agencies have over the years gauged their organizational performance by putting more emphasis on their internal performance than anything else. They have done so, by considering and evaluating various factors that include FTEs or Full Time Equivalents, the total number of programs that are controlled by the organization, and the budget that is allocated for a given fiscal year.

On the other hand, the private sector companies generally put emphasis on various financial measures pertaining to the bottom line or the basics of their business, like ROI, market share, and the amount of earnings per share.

When considered individually, none of these factors would provide a holistic view of the performance of the organization or business in question. However, by balancing the internal measures, process measures, end results and the financial measures, managers are able to draw a comprehensive picture that helps them take a bird’s eye view and locate the areas that need substantial improvements. It is the balanced scorecard that helps the managers in doing that. In other words, a balanced scorecard can be defined as a strategy performance management instrument that is backed by a string of automation tools as well as design methodologies which can be utilized by the managers to keep a track of activities, plans and their executions, and monitor the end results of business procedures.

It is classically established that managers generally tend to acquire information from the following perspectives:

Perspective of the customers:Managers need to know whether their company is at all satisfying the needs of its customers and meeting their demands. They are always in search of the answer to the question, “How our customers look at us?”

Perspective of the internal business:They need to put emphasis on the critical parameters pertaining to internal operations, so as to make sure that they are able to satisfy the customers and meet their demands.

Perspective of learning and innovation:They need to optimize the ability of the business to improve the existing ties, and come out with newer collaborations that directly boost productivity and improve the standard of business.

The majority of the organizations today look forward to taking a 360 degree or (as mentioned earlier) a bird’s eye view of their performance, by taking stocks of reports, reviews and only a limited number of KPIs or Key Performance Indicators, or those indicators that have the maximum impact on the performance at the end of the day. It is this approach that is followed by balanced scorecard, and this makes all the difference at the end of the day.

The following aspects or parameters enjoy importance in such a scorecard:

Sales

Net Margin

Profit

Residual Income

Return on Investment

Gross Margin

Return on the Employed Capital

So, make sure your business has a healthy approach to balanced scorecard; you will surely thrive. All the best!

With the changing business needs, business process management, commonly abbreviated as BPM is also developing with great guns. If you want your business to touch the ultimate height of success, you need to stay updated with the varying requirements of customers and also, put in the best efforts to fulfill those requirements. The successful implementation of BPM helps a company to perform all these duties with utmost perfection. In different times different trends have generated a strong effect on business process management. At present, there are numerous trends triggering changes in BPM. You need to be aware of them if you wish to write the success story of your business.

Here are the top trends that are impacting BPM now.

Mobile– This is the age of smartphones and tablets. These advanced devices have come within the grip of maximum number of consumers and the web world has gone mobile completely. Whether it is browsing a website or using an app, everyone is hooked to mobile for accessing Internet these days. Companies are leveraging this phenomenon in the best possible manner to cater to their niche audience and thereby, fulfill their business goals. Today, almost every company has a mobile website. Many companies also boast an application of their own along with a mobile website.

Social Media– The evolution of the web world has gifted us an incredible platform to get heard, get seen and get known. It is social media which started off as a fun platform for connecting with likeminded people and sharing thoughts and views with them, but quickly developed to be an amazing dais for marketing products and services. Today, you will hardly find a brand or a company not having a Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn account. This is because it is easier for businesses to reach out to their potential customers. On the other hand, audience also considers social media sites as the fastest way of knowing about new products or services.

Cloud Computing– Among the most striking technological advances that have taken place in recent times, cloud computing is definitely one of them for sure. A large number of organizations have reaped ample benefits from this remarkable technology. With the emergence of cloud computing, companies do not require investing in hard drives in order to save large amount of data. This saves a lot of money and makes sure that the data is stored securely and can be accessed easily from anywhere anytime. The biggest advantage is that cloud computing offers a great platform for organizations to keep their various departments connected with one another. As a result, employees can post and seek inputs, opinions and feedbacks and fulfill tasks with much more ease and efficiency.

Big data– Many industries especially the financial sector, are using big data with a goal to target more customers, make business decisions and perform risk management more efficiently. Based on the industry insights, forecasts and risks provided by big data, an organization finds it easier and quicker to make important business decisions.

These four trends are influencing business process management in recent times and you must embrace them to achieve success in your business.

Making the right career choice is one of the most crucial phases in life. It requires a lot of contemplation and self-assessment. There is a bevy of career options that require different skill-set and academic qualifications. If you are sure about your mathematical and PR skills and possess a natural flair for smooth negotiations, purchasing management can be a good career choice for you. Purchasing managers are also known as procurement managers. These professionals are responsible for taking sound purchasing decisions for a business. As a purchasing manager, you will fulfill the duty of procuring the finest quality supplies or products for the organization you work with.

Not just appropriate educational qualifications, some interpersonal skills are necessary to shine as a procurement manager.

Communication skills, both written and verbal

Negotiating and PR skills

Numerical ability

An eye for detail

Organizational ability

Leadership skills

Team-working skills

Meticulousness and judgment skills

Ability to take decisions promptly and work efficiently under pressure

Adaptation skills

Now, let’s find out how you should proceed to become a purchasing manager.

Step 1 – Pursue a bachelor’s degree in economics, business and finance or in any relevant discipline. It is worth mentioning that a degree in applied science is also acceptable for a career in procurement management.

Step 2 - After completing graduation, you can either enroll in a master’s degree program in the same discipline or look for opportunities to acquire work experience. In case you go for the latter path, you should give it a thought to obtain post-graduation later in order to upgrade your knowledge base, increase efficiency and advance in career.

Step 3 - The role of procurement director demands a minimum of five years of experience. At the initial stage, be ready to take up the position of a purchasing agent. Never expect any organization to employ you in the position of purchasing manager directly. After working as a purchasing agent for a few years, you will be promoted to the position of assistant purchasing manager on the basis of your proficiency. A high level of expertise is needed to become a procurement manager. You can achieve that degree of knowledge by fulfilling the roles of purchasing agent and assistant purchasing manager as you will possess a strong understanding of various aspects of a procurement department, such as stocks, inventory, pricing, suppliers and consumers.

Step 4 - Certification is not mandatory in order to be eligible for the role of purchasing manager. But, you can definitely get an edge over your competitors with certification. If you are interested to acquire this competitive advantage, find out the requirements for certification in your state.

These are the steps that will shape the path to become a purchasing manager. When you become the procurement manager of a reputable organization, you will be given the following responsibilities.

Listing the supplies and services the business requires

Keeping track of the stock levels

Preparing an estimation of the stock levels

Conducting research on new goods and suppliers

Negotiating with suppliers and deciding on the best possible rates

Testing the quality of supplies

Preparing and managing agreements with suppliers

Ensuring that the delivery of supplies is punctual

Dealing out payments and managing invoices

Staying updated with the new trends ruling the market

So, you have a lot of work to do when you enter into this profession. Study well, work hard and shape a successful career as a purchasing manager.

Not all organizations reflect the same leadership style. Some firms follow a single leadership style while many organizations embrace more than one leadership styles. Actually, the business objectives of a company determine the type of leadership style which will suit the organization perfectly. In this article, we will talk about various types of leadership style. It is worth mentioning that each of them has their share of merits and demerits.

Participative Style

It is the most appreciated leadership style amongst employees since they are given the liberty to voice their opinions and contribute significantly in a decision-making process. In the participative leadership style, also known as democratic management style, it is the leader who takes all the final decisions only after listening to the employees’ viewpoints. When an organization requires making any amendments or improvements in various internal departments, this type of leadership style proves to be successful as employees quickly adapt to the alterations. The reason behind this prompt acceptability is the right provided to the workforce to express their views and the value given to their outlook.

Autocratic Style

Just the opposite of participative style of headship, the autocratic or domineering leadership style allows managers to take all decisions sans the participation of any employee in the decision-making process. So, it can be said that managers are the all-in-all and nobody can dare to question their final call. This management style works to keep a vigil eye on employees who have a laidback attitude. On the other hand, this style can be a bit intimidating and can affect the productivity of a creative professional.

Transformational Style

The transformational leadership style slightly resembles the participative style of leadership. A company following this leadership style needs the active involvement of management in fulfilling business objectives. The management is required to communicate with the employees, motivate them and boost their level of productivity and proficiency.

Transactional Style

In the transactional style of leadership, the manager and the team members determine business objectives and the employees work under the manager’s headship to achieve the set goals. It is the manager who trains employees, guides them to meet deadlines and evaluates their performance. An employee gets rewards he or she deserves for an impressive performance. The rewards come in the form of incentives.

Laissez-Faire Style

You can decide to follow this type of leadership style only when you have got professionals having extensive experience and wide expertise working in your company. Since laissez-faire style supports slight or zero supervision, a business owner needs highly skilled and extremely professional employees in his or her firm. This way he or she can have peace of mind that work is going on perfectly without any supervision.

Frankly speaking, laissez-faire style hardly works and it does nothing good, but results into unfavorable output. But, you may put an effort to make a change.

These are the top five leadership styles prevalent in maximum organizations. Set your business goals, scrutinize them thoroughly and then, choose which type of leadership style will be appropriate for the smooth functioning of your organization.

If you intend to start your own business, you should know how balanced scorecard can help you in savoring success. Balanced scorecard constitutes fiscal and non-fiscal procedures that contribute to the success of a business. It is mainly implemented by large-scale organizations, but many mid-level and small-sized companies are using balanced scorecard and the best part is that they are benefitting from it a lot.

What is balanced scorecard?

To put it in the simplest terms, balanced scorecard is an effective planning and management system. Starting from public-sector and private-sector firms to non-profit organizations and industrial houses, each and every entity today resorts to balanced scorecard to create a semblance between their vision and operational steps, keep track of performance and boost internal and external business processes.

So, it seems you must give a thought to incorporate it for the smooth functioning of your business. Knowing about balanced scorecard’s amazing advantages may strengthen your decision to implement this winning business planning and management system.

What are the benefits of balanced scorecard?

In business, the three most important aspects are

Monitoring of performance

Implementation of strategy

Increasing number of non-physical properties

Balanced scorecard helps to manage these aspects skillfully. Gone are the days of conventional fiscal procedures related to performance management. They no longer succeed to generate a strong effect on the contemporary business scenario and fail to get an insight into the future business environment. Balanced scorecard helps a business with perfect financial measures of performance. The most challenging task in a business is to implement successful strategies. Balanced scorecard aids to overcome this challenge with no obstacles created by management and resources. On the other hand, more than fifty percent of an organization’s value is constituted by its non-physical properties. Balanced scorecard offers important metrics for utilizing these assets efficiently.

Balanced scorecard gauges performance from the following standpoints.

Fiscal

Customer

Efficiency

Internal business procedures

With the increase of an employee’s proficiency, the company flourishes with the development of its internal business procedures. This in turn, results in manufacturing advanced products which are the only way to please target customers and increase market share. When a company accomplishes impressive market share, its fiscal procedures mirror that successfully.

By using balanced scorecard, you can connect your short-term plans with your long-term goals effectively with the help of four crucial management processes.

At first, the ideas are materialized by creating strategies.

The second process is all about making all departments aware of the strategies.

Strong business planning occupies the next step where managers create a powerful backup plan.

The fourth or the final process is about gaining feedback and look for scope of improvement. This helps an organization to respond to varying requirements and boosts it to perform more competently next time.

So, this was all about balanced scorecard and its superb benefits. If you want to see your business at the highest level of success, make sure to use balanced scorecard. You can always seek professional consultation regarding its implementation and usage.

Conducting successful change management is nothing less than an ordeal if you do not know the proper ways to perform the task swiftly. Often in an organization, superior executives are seen complaining about the failure of change management programs. The flaws lie at the core of the planning of a particular change management initiative. While chalking out the plan, you need to take into account certain significant aspects. If you are not aware of those vital factors, there is no need to worry. This article will make you familiar with the necessary fundamental rules for successful and speedy change management.

Tip 1- At first, you should make sure that you do not assign the execution of a large-scale change program to the middle management. The senior management with higher level of efficiency and skills will be able to execute a large-scale change program. Such professionals are well-versed in the tricks that are needed to apply in the event of solving any complex problems. They can easily and rapidly simplify the otherwise tough process of change management. Also the fact that they have a wide base of knowledge, especially the strong awareness of current economic factors help in simplifying and speeding up the implementation of a change management program.

Tip 2- One thing that many company heads ignore when working on change management is to inform the employees that a change is going to occur. This is one mistake which can cost a company very badly. Because of the lack of awareness, employees may hesitate, refuse or take too much time to accept the change. Many valued employees may take the decision to leave the company as they were not notified prior to the implementation of the change and thinking that they are not much indispensable for company’s success. If you are not sure regarding how to convey the message to your staff, you may follow the below-mentioned steps.

Settle down for a meeting with the managers of each and every department and discuss about the proposed change management initiative. The managers then will pass on the details of the conversation i.e. about the change management program to their team members.

Allow your employees from all departments to provide feedback at every phase of the execution of the change management program. You never know you may come across some really innovative and viable ideas to incorporate in the project.

Never neglect the queries of any employee regarding the initiative. Take heed of their questions and try to get back with a clear, wise and positive reply. If anyone comes up with any apprehensions, you bear the liability to clear all the doubts.

These three steps ensure that your employees are well-aware of a future change in the organization.

Tip 3– When handling a change management program, you need to be strict in terms of the organizational culture not influencing the implementation of a change. If there is a requirement to bring out slight and healthy alterations in the organizational culture, you should be flexible to make such revisions.

So, take help from these tips and ensure a successful change management.

There is not just one reason behind the failure of organizational changes. In fact, there are multiple factors that affect the implementation of a change management initiative. One of them is the behavior of both the employer and employees. How the employer thinks and acts regarding an organizational change is important for its incorporation. On the other hand, the reaction of the employees towards a change is imperative for its success in future. If you are an employer, you need to make sure that behavior does not act as a stumbling block in the way of a successful organizational change.

When a change management initiative is going through lot of complexities, following things can be denoted as responsible for the same.

Not making the employees aware of the change

Not involving the staff in the decisions regarding change management

Engaging only the leaders or managers in the decision-making process

Imposing the change program on the staff

Not providing sufficient time to staff to understand and accept the change

It is quite natural that an employee will give forth a negative reaction if he or she has to go through the aforementioned troubles. As a result, the implementation of the change program will be affected and its success will be in doubt. So, at no cost you should commit these errors. Keeping in mind the following factors may ensure the success of an organizational change.

While employing a change strategy, do not forget to make the managers a part of the implementation process. A manager holds the responsibility to convey crucial message (given by the higher management) to his or her team members. This way you can be sure that the whole staff of the company is familiar with the proposed change. But, make sure that the managers you have recruited are efficient enough to fulfill their responsibilities.

The next step is to plan actions that will be helpful towards achieving the company objectives. Here, again you will be required to engage the managers in order to establish strong communication with the employees, make them understand the importance of the change and the essentials of the change initiative and motivate and guide them to perform at their best for the success of the change program. This way, the capabilities of the employees can be measured, appreciated or set right and each employee will feel important for the advancement of the organization.

In order to get the best out of your staff for the success of organizational change, you can decide to offer incentives and perks to those who perform with utmost perseverance. But, while doing so, you should make sure there is no unhealthy competition amongst the employees. This responsibility must be shouldered by the managers.

Therefore, it is the behavior or the reaction of the employees that matter most when striving for the smooth implementation of a change program. How the employees will behave or react to a change management initiative is dependent on the approach of the employer and the higher management towards the staff.

In order to identify objectives and measure these against key financial-, customer-, internal business process- and growth-metrics, companies will benefit greatly from applying a balanced scorecard to their activities. The balanced scorecard template provides a set of metrics that has been designed to help executives as well as management and finance professionals to measure company success. In other words, the balanced scorecard template is a model used to position the success of a company relative to its short- and long-term objectives.

Definition of the Balanced Scorecard Template

The balanced scorecard template - a popular measurement system used in consulting, is defined as follows:

“Balanced scorecard methodology is a management tool designed to translate an organization's mission statement and overall business strategy into specific, quantifiable goals and to monitor the organization's performance in terms of achieving these goals.”

The template of the balanced scorecard should contain a description of the objective type, guidance on how to measure the objectives, as well as definitions of the targets being pursued.

Development of the Balanced Scorecard Template

The theory of the balanced scorecard template was developed in the early 1990’s by Robert Kaplan and David Norton. The general way of approaching business during that time was to measure success exclusively based on financial measures. With the balanced scorecard template, Kaplan and David introduced a way to more comprehensively measure the success of a company - by a system providing managers with the information needed in order to preventively make better decisions, instead of just reporting financial activities of the past. A key aspect of the template is measurement, but the purpose of it is to enable the management to set, track and achieve strategic objectives for the organization. Therefore, the balanced scorecard template should be considered as a management system, instead of merely a measurement system.

The four Pillars of the Balanced Scorecard Template

As earlier established, the balanced scorecard template should be considered as a management system, with the purpose of providing information on how to set, track and achieve strategic objectives. After developing these strategies, the objectives of them should be tracked through the four pillars of the balanced scorecard, which are the perspectives of customers, finances, internal business processes, as well as knowledge, education and growth. In order for business executives and managers to plan, implement and achieve strategies and the objectives of those, the four pillars of the balanced scorecard template are necessary. The concept behind each pillar is described below.

The Customer Pillar

The customer pillar of the balanced scorecard template measures the satisfaction of a company’s customers, as well as their performance requirements. These elements are being measured with consideration to both the organization and the product or service being delivered.

The Financial Pillar

The function of the financial pillar within the balanced scorecard template is to track the financial requirements of an organization. Furthermore, this pillars also allows for an organization to track its financial performances.

The Internal Business Process Pillar

The internal business process pillar allows for a company to measure its critical-to-customer process requirements and measures, defining those elements that are of critical meaning to customers when choosing the outlet of their businesses.

The Knowledge, Education and Growth Pillar

Finally, the pillar of knowledge, education and growth within the balanced scorecard template focuses on ways for a company to obtain and capture knowledge as well as on ways to educate employees. This particular pillar is also concerned with strategies on how to maintain and grow a competitive edge within the markets of a certain company.

In order for a company to thrive, its four pillars the balanced scorecard have to be measured, analyzed and improved together continuously. To achieve the conceptual meaning of the balanced scorecard, strategies, objectives and tactics have to bet set for the four pillars. The strategies and tactics of a company should then be congruent and considered an essential thread, tying together the business philosophy. Furthermore, this threadshould be followed when working towards the strategic objectives described in the balanced scorecard methodology

Do you work with a leader who has a strong dislike for you? Are you in a fix whether to leave or tolerate the aversion? Let me tell you that the smartest option is not to leave and at the same time not to tolerate. If you are wondering how is it possible, you must know that there are many effective tips and tricks to deal with a boss who does not like you much. Instead of shifting to another firm, take it as a challenge to change the perspective of your boss towards you and impress him or her with a good performance.

Steer clear of some mistakes- The first and foremost tip is that you should not do any one of the following things when working with a difficult boss.

Keep out of sight from the boss in order to avoid confrontation– It does not matter really whether you are hiding from your boss. When you get a call to be present in a management meeting, can you afford to be absent at that time? Obviously no, otherwise you will end up putting your job on risk.

Be stubborn and not cooperate– This ultimately affects the progress of work and spoils the harmony of the team members. Your problem should not bother your team members or the progress of a project.

Find out if you are lacking anywhere– Before directly jumping into the conclusion that your boss simply hates you no matter how well you perform, it is important that you keep calm and examine whether there are any fault of yours. What happens often is that we tend to overlook our errors while blaming a person. So, you need to find out whether you are blaming your boss for no reason or for good reasons. Analyze your performance in the past few months and if possible, ask for feedback to come across the weak points (if any).

Stress on the points of conformity– When you come to know that you and your boss agree on certain points, take advantage of this semblance. Keep focus on those points and try to implement them in your work. This may work wonders to drive away the disparity between you and your boss.

Talk to the person– Instead of thinking hard what is going wrong, you may communicate with your boss in person and discuss about the matter. Sometimes, direct conversation solves many grave issues. It may work for you as well.

Whether it is war field, playground or workplace, you must not leave unless and until you make the best attempt to prove your worth. With that in mind, take heed of these tips to work with a tricky boss who dislikes you.

Many companies feel it is safe to outsource their IT services so that these complex tasks are handled by efficient and experienced hands. They also take this business strategy for reducing costs and saving time. No matter for what reason a company decides to outsource their IT services, they have to choose a reliable and renowned service provider. The entire sourcing process becomes hassle-free with the help of an efficient service provider. There are certain steps that lead to successful IT strategic sourcing. A sourcing manager needs to follow them to fulfill his or her responsibilities effectively. Let’s find them out in the following paragraphs.

Five steps to effective IT strategic sourcing

Comprehend the objectives of a firm– The first and foremost step that a sourcing manager needs to take is to gain a strong understanding of the goals of the company and then, find out the reasons behind their decision to outsource IT services. This research helps the professional to plan the whole sourcing process. The understanding of the business goals aids in the process of locating and selecting the most proficient service provider.

Find and shortlist service providers– The next step is to start the search for a reputed, competent and trustworthy service provider that will be able to pull out the job with utmost proficiency and finish the project within the proposed budget and schedule. It is important for the sourcing manager to shortlist four to five service providers so that there is an immediate option when one fails to live up to the expectations during the selection process.

Settle for the best deal– When a company decides to outsource IT services, one of the major reasons behind this happens to be the plan or strategy to control costs. So, it becomes imperative for the sourcing manager to negotiate the most reasonable prices keeping in view the interests of the company. On the other hand, the service provider also wants to secure good profits. Since the sourcing manager works as a mediator between the parent company and the service provider or partner, the professional has to make sure that both the parties gain the most out of the collaboration.

Make an agreement between the company and the IT service provider– In the fourth step, a sourcing manager prepares a contract where all the details of the prospective partnership are clearly penned down. The agreement also eloquently explains the expectations that both the parties have from each other throughout the business collaboration. Then, the contract is finalized by taking the signatures of the allies.

Maintain the business relation amicably– In order to ensure the successful implementation of the IT sourcing strategy, it is significant to maintain the business relation cordially. There may be the requirement of bringing any changes in the agreement and for that maintaining a strong and amicable relationship is necessary. Communication is the key to manage a good and long-lasting business relation.

Therefore, these are the five essential steps that make sure that an IT strategic sourcing process is smooth and trouble-free.

Those who hold leadership positions in organizations will agree that at some point of time, they may have to handle underperforming employees. Managers who constantly communicate with every member of their department find it easy to deal with such employees while administrators who are reluctant to communicate with their team members on a daily basis face difficulties to tackle underperforming employees. So, it can be said that one of the effective ways of handling underperforming employees is communication. There must be other useful techniques as well. Without stretching this paragraph more let’s check out the dos and don’ts to tackle an underperforming employee.

Things not to do when dealing with an underperforming employee

Relying on annual performance review– By the time of the annual performance review, you may encounter that an employee has deteriorated a lot. So, it is not a good option to wait for the annual performance review in order to work on the weak areas of an employee. An employee will not be familiar with his or her drawbacks unless and until you address the pitfalls immediately. Moreover, confronting an employee regarding his or her mistakes or shortcomings on the annual performance review event has the high possibility of obtaining negative reaction from the underperforming employee. The result can be totally different from what you expect.

Chalking out a performance improvement plan– You may think that performance improvement plan can be a good method to encourage an underperforming employee to rectify his or her mistakes and thereby, progress in his or her work. But, in reality, the thing is not at all so optimistic like that. Rather than motivating an employee to improve and perform better, a performance improvement plan triggers pessimistic feelings in an underperforming employee. The employee feels offended, isolated and victimized. Many talented employees with crooked mind tend to misbehave and belittle that particular employee.

Things to do when dealing with an underperforming employee

Know the reasons for underperformance– The most appropriate and the easiest way to tackle an underperforming employee is to find out what actually is/are leading an employee to perform below average. A number of factors can affect an employee’s performance. Some of them are mentioned as follows.

Unable to comprehend the business goals

Disparity between the job role and the capabilities of the employee

No evaluation of the employee’s work

Lack of motivation

Unfavorable work environment

Problems in personal life

Harassment at workplace

As you can see inefficiency is not always the reason behind the underperformance of an employee.

Arrange for proper counseling, training and workshops– After delving deeper into the roots of underperformance, your next step will be to organize counseling and training sessions for employees who are lagging behind. Deal with the matter with authority as well as with sensitivity so that an employee does not become an element of banter amongst his or her colleagues.

So, keep in mind these tips and guide your underperforming employees to the right path of advancement and success.

Are you confused regarding how to implement a business process management (BPM) initiative with success? Are you looking for a winning solution to get hold of good IT stock? You do not need to worry much as you will be able to clear your confusion and get an effective solution with the help of the following tips.

Tip 1– Keep an eye on the applications that are equipped with industry-specific elements and ensure best practices and then, convert into rigid applications that need only configuration and a little customization in order to fulfill the organizational goals.

Tip 2– With the use of pre-built and recycled elements, developers in the field of Information Technology can create applications utilizing pre-built application components coarse-grained service elements thereby, saving time, increasing value and making proper use of the service delivery finest practices embedded into the elements.

Tip 3– You need to recognize the importance of creating strong modeling setups in order to create applications with the use of BPMN-based process modeling tools or CMMN-based case modeling tools. There is also the requirement of a service-inclined and architecture-yielding structure to make sure that developers can build as well as use the web services repeatedly for the successful development of applications. This framework is required furthermore to utilize the organization service bus usability to fulfill more complicated assimilation tasks that surpass the standard web services incorporation.

Tip 4– You should choose a solution which offer adequate resources and assistance to the developers. The resources and the assistance should be in the form of inclusive libraries, code clips, reusable components and communities where developers can interact, gain knowledge and be enriched.

If you follow these guidelines religiously, you will be benefitted in several ways. At first, you will come across a business process management solution which suits your requirements and in the second place; the solution can acclimatize to varying requirements at different times. Because of the flexibility of the solution, you will be required to spend less time, resources and energy in looking for different solutions to suit diverse requirements at varied time-levels.

It is worth mentioning that the system in which the applications are created is an amalgamation of the different business needs at different times for distinct solutions. Being aware and being knowledgeable helps to choose an ideal solution which will aid in the development of your organization.

One of the major stumbling blocks in the road of successful implementation of a BPM initiative has been the clash centering on process ownership between business stakeholders and IT. However, this obstacle (or the disagreement) seems to be disappearing as more and more organizations are showing willingness to work with IT to carry out successful BPM implementation.

Therefore, from the above discussion, you may have got an understanding regarding how to incorporate your BPM program effectively. You may have also realized that IT can help your organization flourish and touch the highest peak of success provided you choose and apply a comprehensive solution. Keep these aspects in mind and strategize well and wisely.

So much is heard and written about the signs of a good leader. Don’t you feel eager to know what makes a bad leader? The judgment of good and bad is made after comparison. That is why unless and until you know the traits of a bad leader, you cannot judge appropriately what makes an efficient leader. So, without extending this introductory paragraph any more, let’s check what faults turn one into a bad leader.

What are the five traits of a poor leader?

An extremely domineering attitude– It is fine that you have the position and the authority to give orders, but being too authoritative does not help at all. An excessively bossy nature makes employees feel subdued as a result of which, you may fail to gain trust and loyalty from them. The staff will always be pressurized and deem you as an autocratic person which is not at all favorable for the success of your organization.

Reluctant to go for organizational changes– Organizational changes are necessary for the smooth functioning of a business. What can be seen in most cases is that bosses are hesitant to bring any changes within the organization for various reasons. They are intimidated by the hard work they have to do and the responsibilities they have to shoulder in order to bring out the change successfully. This is a major turnoff in a leader.

Diffidence and indecisiveness– A leader has to take a lot of decisions, minor and major alike. If a boss fails to show confidence and promptness and wear a wavering attitude in the decision-making process, he or she definitely does not deserve to hold the leadership position. When a leader is diffident and indecisive, who will motivate the employees to improve?

A compromising approach– As a leader, you need to have faith in your principles and decisions and at the same time, you should listen to opinions of others. One of the biggest flaws found in bosses is that many of them are eager to compromise in order to avoid confrontations. This does not convey a positive message to the employees who think their boss is scared of facing arguments.

Lack of understanding- In order to lead efficiently, a person requires delving deeper into the minds of the employees. He or she has to think from the perspective of an employee before taking any decision regarding the workforce. Otherwise, employees will have a lot to complain about their leader. Empathy is an innate quality and it is said that a true leader is born with it. So, you may think that an individual who is devoid of this inherent skill cannot qualify for a leadership position. In this respect it is worth mentioning that passion can encourage a person to conquer his or her limitations and come out as a winner. One who is keen to hold such a crucial rank can develop this ability by self-assessment.

Therefore, if you dream of becoming a leader one day, you have to earn the big chair by keeping these five flaws at bay.

Organizational change management is tricky for those who are not aware of the facts involved in this matter. On the flip side, it is easy for those who are clever enough to stay away from the fictional elements of the same. The concept of organizational change management is surrounded by a lot of real and illusory factors. If you want to bring out a change successfully, you need to be aware of these factors. Take a look at the following to know about the factual elements and the false beliefs that revolve around the concept of organizational change.

Grab the facts about change

You will gain if you believe in these facts.

An organizational change takes place successfully when the employees of the firm change. A company is nothing without its workforce. So, it makes absolute sense that unless and until the staff is ready to change, the organizational change will not be successful at all. There is no point in implementing new structures and procedures if the employees are reluctant to change their perspectives and embrace new ways of working.

The reactions of employees are important during the implementation of a change initiative.An individual is bound to react when he or she is asked to think and work in a new way. After all it is the employees that ensure the hassle-free functioning of an organization. When there is an announcement regarding a change, each and every employee reacts in a different way and all the reactions play a big role in deciding whether the change will be successful or not.

The more you involve your staff in the organizational change initiative, the less they are likely to generate pessimistic response.When employees know that their opinions are important in bringing out the organizational change, they will make best efforts to understand and accept the change.

Keep away from the fiction about change

You will lose if you believe in these myths.

An individual who is not ready to accept the change suffers from pessimism.An organization may have hundreds of people working to fulfill the business goals. Now, all the employees are not equipped with the same traits. All of them do not think and act in the same way. So, it is quite natural if two employees are unable to agree on a particular subject. You should not neglect an employee generating a negative response about the proposed change. Instead, you must try to find out why the individual thinks like that.

Making an announcement that a change will take place is adequate.If you want your organizational change initiative to be a success, you need to do more than just announcing that a change is going to happen soon. Your employees need sufficient time to understand what the change program is all about and why it is necessary to bring the change so that they can prepare to accept it.

So, make sure to embrace the facts and shun the misconceptions when dealing with organizational change management.

Before discussing about the vital and different objectives of a global sourcing initiative, it is important to talk a bit about the concept of global sourcing for those who are new to the model. Then, we will move on to the main topic.

Global sourcing is considered as a winning procurement strategy embraced by most large-scale organizations. Global sourcing or international purchasing can help an organization in many ways. If your local suppliers are not offering standard quality supplies at reasonable prices or want to outsource your manufacturing process to a destination where labor wages are quite low, global sourcing can turn out to be the right option. Global enterprises constantly take note of the emerging countries and plan to spread their business to those destinations. This is also a global sourcing strategy when a company is eager to leverage the competencies of a country’s human resources.

No matter for what purpose you want to go for this effective procurement strategy, when planning a global sourcing initiative, you will be required to keep in mind the following four objectives. These goals are divergent, but the biggest trick is to combine them seamlessly, fulfill them efficiently and make global sourcing a success.

Four chief and contrasting global sourcing objectives

Some of the most significant reasons behind global sourcing are cost reduction, detection and eradication of inefficiencies and advancement of business procedures. But, this does not mean that once these goals are fulfilled, the benefits of this procurement strategy lose viability. After the accomplishment of the set goals, global sourcing helps to create new competence through change and improvement. The new competency leads to a better and more advanced operational efficiency.

There is no doubt that the implementation of a global procurement initiative brings changes within the organization. Every organization wants this switch to take place quickly and ensure that it does not affect the business. Quicker the transition, lesser the risks. It gives people less time to react and creates less or zero doubts thereby, reducing risks. Global sourcing helps to achieve this quick transition which is something not supported by traditional outsourcing.

Global sourcing is beneficial not only for controlling costs, but also for mitigating risks provided adequate attention is given to this aspect. While deciding on the price, you must check whether the sourcing service provider will be able to deliver as per planning and if both the parties will gain from the strategy.

During the implementation of a global procurement initiative, employees are required to take up vital roles and shoulder significant responsibilities to make sure the implementation is impeccable. This helps the staff to learn new aspects, improve efficiency and get enriched. The knowhow gained by the employees help the organization’s development in the long run.

These are the four main objectives of global sourcing that are disparate. If you want this procurement strategy reap ample benefits for your organization, you should bring these different goals into one line. Then only, global sourcing will prove to be a successful venture for your company.

Is this the first time you are going to work on a business process management project? Let me tell you that handling such a project requires perfect planning and strong determination to achieve goals. There is more than one way to follow in order to get started with a BPM project and you can make your choice from a large assortment of tools. But, you need to get clear answer to five important questions so that you do not face any confusion in the middle of the project work. The five questions are listed in the following.

What is the current process all about and what it can achieve for your business?

The first and foremost thing to do is to find out what the current process deals with. Try to learn what the process achieves for your business. Is it performing efficiently in generating successful end-result? Are your employees and end-users comfortable with the existing process? If the answer to both these questions is in negative, you must decide to work on the loopholes of the existing process.

How is the process functioning currently?

The second step is to know how the process is working currently. This will give you an idea regarding the scope of improvement in any department. You can get started with this task with the help of CEM method or flowchart. Get your entire staff involved in the process mapping so that they can understand how the process works and how they can contribute to enhance its functionality.

What are the roles and responsibilities involved in the process?

This will help you to know whether right people have been entrusted with right roles and responsibilities. Also, you will be able to evaluate the efficiency of each of the employees in your organization. On the basis of the evaluation, you will be able to decide which employee needs to improve and who is capable of shouldering more complex duties. This is one of the biggest advantages of involving the full workforce in process mapping.

Which business entities take part in the process?

As the general rule says, the more functional silos in an organization, the more complicated and difficult becomes the process mapping. This is because it takes a lot of time and effort to bring all the functional silos on one line in order to set up an appropriate plan for fulfilling business goals. You should make a strict and well-thought-out approach to abandon functional silos that are ineffectual. Otherwise, it will be tough for you to flourish.

How will the process optimization benefit customers?

Seeking answer to this query is starting to plan your business process management project. It is important for you to find out whether the improvements that are going to take place will be helpful for the customers or not. Your ultimate goal is to make your end-users happy with your service. Make sure that the process optimization is well-planned to achieve the goal.

Therefore, finding answer to these five queries will prepare you well for handling a BPM project successfully.

Is this the first time you are going to work on a business process management project? Let me tell you that handling such a project requires perfect planning and strong determination to achieve goals. There is more than one way to follow in order to get started with a BPM project and you can make your choice from a large assortment of tools. But, you need to get clear answer to five important questions so that you do not face any confusion in the middle of the project work. The five questions are listed in the following.

What is the current process all about and what it can achieve for your business?

The first and foremost thing to do is to find out what the current process deals with. Try to learn what the process achieves for your business. Is it performing efficiently in generating successful end-result? Are your employees and end-users comfortable with the existing process? If the answer to both these questions is in negative, you must decide to work on the loopholes of the existing process.

How is the process functioning currently?

The second step is to know how the process is working currently. This will give you an idea regarding the scope of improvement in any department. You can get started with this task with the help of CEM method or flowchart. Get your entire staff involved in the process mapping so that they can understand how the process works and how they can contribute to enhance its functionality.

What are the roles and responsibilities involved in the process?

This will help you to know whether right people have been entrusted with right roles and responsibilities. Also, you will be able to evaluate the efficiency of each of the employees in your organization. On the basis of the evaluation, you will be able to decide which employee needs to improve and who is capable of shouldering more complex duties. This is one of the biggest advantages of involving the full workforce in process mapping.

Which business entities take part in the process?

As the general rule says, the more functional silos in an organization, the more complicated and difficult becomes the process mapping. This is because it takes a lot of time and effort to bring all the functional silos on one line in order to set up an appropriate plan for fulfilling business goals. You should make a strict and well-thought-out approach to abandon functional silos that are ineffectual. Otherwise, it will be tough for you to flourish.

How will the process optimization benefit customers?

Seeking answer to this query is starting to plan your business process management project. It is important for you to find out whether the improvements that are going to take place will be helpful for the customers or not. Your ultimate goal is to make your end-users happy with your service. Make sure that the process optimization is well-planned to achieve the goal.

Therefore, finding answer to these five queries will prepare you well for handling a BPM project successfully.

Have you ever imagined that rock and roll can teach you a lot about ERP implementations? No matter how hard it is to believe, but the lyrics of the classic rock songs can actually help you with a successful ERP implementation. Rock and roll gives five fabulous lessons that can be applied to boost an ERP software program.

Don’t take the highway to hell - ERP implementations are complex and executing them successfully is nothing less than overcoming one of the biggest challenges in life. Maximum ERP software programs take more time and resources to get fulfilled and in most cases, fail to succeed and generate the estimated business advantages at the end. Every organization needs to grasp the fact that adequate time, tools and resources are required for proper ERP implementations otherwise; they will follow the wrong path. Organizational change management and project management are among the several factors that can contribute to a perfect ERP software implementation and let you not to step in the highway to hell or the incorrect road to success.

Wipe away the smoke on the water- ERP projects fail due to a lot of factors like, taking wrong decisions and overlooking risks throughout the project work. That is why an efficient team comprising of experienced ERP consultants is required to execute an ERP project. The team must be prompt in identifying the bottlenecks and prevent them before they affect the progress of the project. What rock and roll teaches us is that before it becomes too late to dodge a malfunction, we should erase the smoke on the water.

Keep in mind that the times they are a-changing– Organizational change management is not easy at all. The anticipations regarding the acceptability of the change amongst the employees prick every organization. Although employees show excitement surrounding the implementation of a new ERP system, but when the real implementation takes place, it becomes crystal clear that the excitement was superficial. Employees show hesitation when the traditional manual business procedures are discarded and they feel reluctant to work in a new system. Also, in most cases, employees waver to embrace the changes unless and until they are successful in understanding them clearly. A robust and comprehensive organizational change management program is necessary to make sure the entire staff accepts the change without any difficulty.

Is your ERP project taking care of your business?- The ultimate goal of ERP implementation is to take care of the business of the organization. Although technical aspects of software play a big role in making the implementation a success or failure, but the issues related to business procedures and employee acceptability are also required to be kept in mind. Paying attention to business process re-engineering will make sure that the organizational change management initiative is a success.

You must not stop believing– It is widely accepted that ERP implementations are tough, but there is no wisdom in falling prey to diffidence before the start of the project. Be realistic, optimistic and confident. Don’t lose faith in your abilities to conquer hurdles and come out as a winner.

Take these five significant lessons from rock and roll for successful ERP implementation.

An organizational change is possible only when all the employees actively participate in the implementation of the change initiative. In order to build a strong BPM Center of Excellence (CoE), you need to gather the most appropriate and efficient human resources. A BPM Center of Excellence is the meeting point of the experience, ingenuity and knowhow of business advancement, business change, performance management and identification and solution of problems. So, it is of high importance that the higher management chooses the right professionals for performing the significant roles in establishing a proficient BPM CoE, thereby making the change initiative successful.

The professionals forming the BPM Center of Excellence are extremely skilled and possess extensive expertise in the modules that aid an organization to flourish and gain a competitive advantage. Here are the key roles needed in the BPM Center of Excellence.

BPM architect– It is a top-ranking position and a business process management architect is entrusted with crucial responsibilities. While selecting a BPM architect, you must make sure that the professional has experience of more than 10 years in the field and has worked on various projects in this time-span. He or she should be adept in the following.

Business process definition

Detection of errors and troubleshooting

Operational and workflow advancement

Documentation of business requirements

BPMS application design

Day-to-day business operations and finance

Business process analyst– An individual in order to qualify the significant role of a business process analyst must be a skilled BPM practitioner with over three years of working experience in various operational advancement projects.

Business process modeler– In the BPM Center of Excellence, the position of business process modeler is of major importance since the professional is required to have a strong understanding of important business process management concepts, business operating theories and fundamental IT applications concepts. Also, he or she should have experience in conducting interviews of business employees.

Business SME– Although the SME will not be actively involved in the BPM Center of Excellence, the professional is required to be familiar with all the business areas the BPM CoE will specialize in. The chief responsibility of a business SME is to make sure that the BPM Center of Excellence team faces no difficulties in communicating with the right people, accessing appropriate and significant information and realizing the requirements for a smooth business operation. The professional is also accountable to ensure that a new business process design is valuable and viable.

Business architect– In case a BPM CoE is required to work on a transformational project, the management needs to include a business architect in the BPM Center of Excellence team. A business architect plays a vital role by aiding the management in taking decisions regarding how the business process needs to change for fulfilling the set goals.

These are the five most crucial roles that are needed to create a skillful BPM Center of Excellence team. Make a discreet scrutiny and choose the best professionals for your BPM CoE wisely.

The overall performance of an organization can be enhanced massively with the implementation of balanced scorecard. By using balanced scorecard, a manager of a company can be relieved of the pressure of focusing on short-term financial objectives and can pay attention to the long-term goals.

Balanced scorecard enables a company steer through four procedures.

Process 1

# Materializing the vision– In order to materialize the organizational objectives, it is important to bring all the members of the management in agreement regarding the goals and plans of the organization. In order to fulfill the business goals with utmost efficiency and meticulousness, the entire organization needs to work harmoniously. In most cases, senior executives seem to be at loggerheads when it comes to making a unified decision. It is necessary to make an integrated approach for converting the vision into reality.

Process 2

# Conversing and connecting– After bringing the senior executives in a consensus, the next thing that a manager needs to do is to convey the strategy to each department of the organization and connect it with the departmental goals. On a general basis, the evaluation of a department is conducted on the basis of its financial performance and incentives and perks are given to the employees after considering their performance in achieving short-term financial objectives. But, the balanced scorecard helps a manager to make sure that each and every level of a firm gains a clear and sound understanding of the long-term plans and also, ensure that the departmental goals are linked to it correctly.

Process 3

# Assimilating business plans– In this process, the integration of the fiscal plans is the main objective of a company. It is not a common event these days that maximum companies are implementing more than one change management initiatives. The implementation of a wide range of change programs makes it tricky for managers to bring all the programs in one line. The integration of all the initiatives is indispensible to meet the strategic goals of an organization. Here in lies the significance of balanced scorecard. By resorting to the objectives of balanced scorecard procedures in aiding the proper allotment of resources and labeling of priorities, a manager can easily focus on the programs that are helpful in achieving the long-term goals of the organization.

Process 4

# Gathering response and increasing knowledge base– Strategic learning is necessary for an organization in order to improve and excel and it is not possible if a firm doesn’t collect feedback and learn from the reviews. The traditional procedures of seeking feedback are concerned only with examining whether the departments and the individual employees of a firm have been successful in achieving the targeted financial objectives. When a company uses balanced scorecard as a strategic management procedure, it can keep track of the achievement of the short-term goals from the point of view of a customer, in view of the internal business procedures and in terms of advancement. This helps to amend strategies on the basis of the current performance of all departments and individual employees.

Therefore, it is clear that a company will be able to benefit a lot with the use of balanced scorecard.

For ensuring successful delivery of products to the customers, a company needs to plan and implement an effective procurement strategy. The efficient incorporation of this strategy makes sure that adequate supplies and items are obtained timely. When working on the sourcing strategy, several factors are to be taken into consideration like, the size of the company and the business strategy and technology currently followed by the company. Based on these aspects, you may opt for either tactical sourcing or strategic procurement. Both these procurement plans have their share of advantages and challenges. In certain circumstances, tactical sourcing can prove to be the perfect sourcing model while some situations demand the implementation of strategic procurement.

If you are confused whether to select strategic procurement or choose tactical sourcing, the following differentiation between these two procurement plans will clear your confusion. Before jotting down the disparities, let’s give you the definition of both the models.

What is strategic procurement?

Strategic sourcing is a long-term meticulous pattern followed by maximum large-scale organizations to cater to their current as well as the future requirements. It generates least amount of risk to the supply line. Firms implementing this procurement strategy fulfill their requirements at the lowest TCO or total cost of ownership.

What is tactical sourcing?

Tactical sourcing is implemented by most mid-level and small-sized companies. It takes day-to-day decisions on buying raw materials or products. Companies embracing this procurement model follow a prompt estimate and order process for a quick production and delivery of end-products. The company needs to keep track that all the required supplies are available in the hour of need at reasonable prices.

Where do tactical sourcing and strategic procurement differ?

The process of strategic procurement establishes a trustworthy business relation between the suppliers and the purchasing organizations with the aim of improving the quality, cost and delivery of the supplies. Extensive market analysis, thorough selection of suppliers and precise approach to maintain long-term and amicable relations with suppliers are the major elements of strategic procurement.

In stark contrast to strategic sourcing, tactical purchasing does not require a company to devote much time in evaluating the needs of the whole firm. Also, an organization following tactical purchasing does not pay much attention when it comes to scrutinizing the capacity of a supplier to cater to its larger requirements in future.

It is commonly believed that a purchasing decision taken in a short span of time (tactical sourcing) has the high chance of going wrong and decisions related to procurement when taken with much precision end up being successful. But, many medium and small firms have succeeded with tactical sourcing. It is a fact that most medium-sized and small-scale companies do not have the sufficient resources and adequate time to consider an extensive procurement plan like strategic sourcing. The chief goal of these firms is to make sure that the manufacturing process operates without any difficulty. So, tactical sourcing becomes the perfect choice for such companies.

On the flip side, large-scale companies have the right ERP platform, the most appropriate skill-sets and in short, the right resources to dedicate enough time to execute a strategic procurement plan.

Are you confused regarding how to implement a business process management (BPM) initiative with success? Are you looking for a winning solution to get hold of good IT stock? You do not need to worry much as you will be able to clear your confusion and get an effective solution with the help of the following tips.

Tip 1– Keep an eye on the applications that are equipped with industry-specific elements and ensure best practices and then, convert into rigid applications that need only configuration and a little customization in order to fulfill the organizational goals.

Tip 2– With the use of pre-built and recycled elements, developers in the field of Information Technology can create applications utilizing pre-built application components coarse-grained service elements thereby, saving time, increasing value and making proper use of the service delivery finest practices embedded into the elements.

Tip 3– You need to recognize the importance of creating strong modeling setups in order to create applications with the use of BPMN-based process modeling tools or CMMN-based case modeling tools. There is also the requirement of a service-inclined and architecture-yielding structure to make sure that developers can build as well as use the web services repeatedly for the successful development of applications. This framework is required furthermore to utilize the organization service bus usability to fulfill more complicated assimilation tasks that surpass the standard web services incorporation.

Tip 4– You should choose a solution which offer adequate resources and assistance to the developers. The resources and the assistance should be in the form of inclusive libraries, code clips, reusable components and communities where developers can interact, gain knowledge and be enriched.

If you follow these guidelines religiously, you will be benefitted in several ways. At first, you will come across a business process management solution which suits your requirements and in the second place; the solution can acclimatize to varying requirements at different times. Because of the flexibility of the solution, you will be required to spend less time, resources and energy in looking for different solutions to suit diverse requirements at varied time-levels.

It is worth mentioning that the system in which the applications are created is an amalgamation of the different business needs at different times for distinct solutions. Being aware and being knowledgeable helps to choose an ideal solution which will aid in the development of your organization.

One of the major stumbling blocks in the road of successful implementation of a BPM initiative has been the clash centering on process ownership between business stakeholders and IT. However, this obstacle (or the disagreement) seems to be disappearing as more and more organizations are showing willingness to work with IT to carry out successful BPM implementation.

Therefore, from the above discussion, you may have got an understanding regarding how to incorporate your BPM program effectively. You may have also realized that IT can help your organization flourish and touch the highest peak of success provided you choose and apply a comprehensive solution. Keep these aspects in mind and strategize well and wisely.